I recently had a Mac problem which completely perplexed me. I locked myself
in this room for 14 hours a day reading everything that I could about
Macintoshes, PPP, and continually trying new settings on the PortMaster,
eventually formatting the flash ROM and doing a clean install. The last part
was not intentional :) I was very frustrated because I also have many
PortMasters and I'm buying a couple more this week. I kept calling and
finally a day later I called late in the afternoon and Jennifer informed me
that Todd, the Mac/PortMaster guru would be calling me back. I called at
12:00 the next day and asked Jennifer what had happened? Why had I not
received a tech support call-back from Todd? She put me on hold. Everyone
that I have ever dealt with at Livingston has been very pleasant to deal
with. Yelling at a receptionist won't ever get you very far, with any
company! I know that if one of my clients takes out their frustrations on
one of my people handling the phone for me, I let them wait and eventually I
will let them know how inappropriate their actions were. It is not the
receptionist's job to know anything about the configuration of your
PortMaster. The only thing that helped me keep my cool... I almost lost a
contract with 2 local schools (they have all Macs/Macs didn't work!)... was
the fact that I knew from past experience that once I eventually got someone
on the phone, my problem would be solved quickly. Jennifer came back on the
line and said that since she promised me the previous day that she would get
Todd for me, I would be the next call. I waited for about 5-10 minutes. When
I finally did get to speak with Todd, I explained the problem. He logged
into my PortMaster and within 10 minutes, everything worked perfectly! Now
trumpet also works. It was such an incredibly STUPID problem, but aren't
they always the worst! (RTS/CTS and software flow control were both on) I
was so happy that once I finally did get someone, he didn't tell me to wait.
He didn't say... Ummm... I dunno?!?! And most importantly: I was his ONLY
priority at that point in time. He didn't waver from the task at hand and he
worked with me non-stop until the problem was solved! I really value that
kind of support. I wrote (in a message to Andy, before I waited for 2 days)
about this "problem" before it ever became one:
>Oh, one other thing. I have had a service issue for over 24 hours now and I
would gladly pay for a 900 call or whatever... This
>isn't a MS-Word installation question, if you know what I mean. I am
willing to pay for Premium support... just thought I'd pass
>it along. I think that Livingston's problem probably isn't a question of
$$$, but more a difficulty finding qualified people. Don't
>get me wrong, Livingston's tech people are among the FINEST i've ever dealt
with, it's just that there aren't enough of them.
>Luckily the web site had everything on it that I needed to reformat my
PM2eR's flash memory and re-install the os. (My
>favorite thing to do at 4:00am!) BTW- Remember I am still using the user
tables and beta7 pmconsole for windows= no
>backup! Arrgghh! Anyway all is well now, well sort of anyway and I'm just
going to wait for the tech support dept. to return my
>call rather than playing with settings which I don't fully understand. I
want to avoid a repeat of last night's performance.
I thought that a shortage of qualified people was the reason for the long
response time and this was confirmed by Brian and others on the list during
this thread today. I understand what it is like to be understaffed and want
to hire more people, but I am unable to find anyone that knows everything I
need for them to know to support my customers properly. So, in the end I do
it all myself. Hopefully they are training a mass of brilliant tech support
people in secret... :) Lookout when these individuals graduate from
"Livingston Tech," because then Livingston will be unstoppable!
Just my $.02, well maybe $1.50, but I felt that it needed to be said.
-Robert
>Yes, I know. If I only had 26 hours in a day... ;-0
26 would be enough for you? I need at least 48! -and sometimes I get it ;)
robert@garden.net
Garden Networks: northern New Jersey's premier Internet service provider
50 Diller Ave. Newton, NJ 07860 (201)300-9211
http://www.garden.net http://www.windows.net